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– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – says… What’s the weirdest hole you have seen? <snip — http://home.att.net/~wamontgomery ) http://www.meadowsfarms.com/golf/watrfall.htm Check out number 8. It’s made to look like you are hitting to a baseall diamond. It’s plenty weird.
And the 12th hole is pretty amazing, too. First Par 6 hole I’ve ever seen. Eliyahu
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Ah, yes, the dreaded hole design that forces a layup off the tee, leaving "all you got" for a second shot. Forgot all about #6 at Eagle’s Watch (or Eagle’s Landing or somesuch) in Chattanooga. 5-iron off the tee to lay up to the "end of the world". 3-wood second shot, all carry to the green that’s way down below, but considerably elevated from the dip in front of it. Played it a number of times. Never parred it. Come to think of it, any golf hole that has a long forced carry is, in my mind, a poorly designed hole. There’s a whole bunch of them at a place near me called Sugar Hill GC. One in particular is especially bothersome. The weird thing about this course is that the white tees generally make the course much too short at around 5400. But the blue tees, which move you back to only around 6300, if memory serves, puts the tees on some of these holes in places where I simply can’t get across even on my best day. The one hole in particular that I have in mind (can’t recall the hole number) is about a 180 carry even from the whites. When the blue tees are back (as they often are), it’s about 225, maybe 240 to get across. That’s CRAZY. I can’t help wondering what the ol’ geezers or women do on that hole, especially when there’s a strong headwind. They’re both faced with anywhere from around 180-165 (women’s tees) just to get over the water. And there’s no place to bail out. That’s just stupid. The designer should be strung up by his balls. Life’s too short to play bad golf courses. And that’s why I haven’t been back to that place. Too bad. It’s a pretty piece of land. Randy
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I think there are a variety of unusual holes… One category is a hole that ABSOLUTELY forces you to hit a short club off the tee then all you want for your second shot. There’s one of those at the course just off the runway of the Columbus OH Airport. They do it with a small tre lined chute. Tee shot is maybe a 4, 5, 6 iron and follow that with a 3w. 
I like "backwards" holes. #10 at the Gattlinburg Country Club (or what ever it’s called these resembles one. Huge hills on both sides of the fairway and an elevated tee box make it a nice looking hole. Looks so easy from the tee. While I’ve never actually played it, General Butler State Park has/had a course built into a ski slope size hill (in fact they had a ski resort there for a few years) and they didn’t move very much earth to level the fairways. Many of the holes played around the hill… not up and down it. I’m told a perfect shot on the upper side of the fairway always rolled to the low side. I guess every shot was up and across the the fairway. Any hole designed to be played as a par 3, 4 or 5 would be pretty unusual. Although I beleive someone recently built a whole course of these multi-par holes.
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You’re right about the 18th hole. I almost mentioned it, but figured it was too hard to explain. I’ve played the course twice. Never lost a ball in the water on 17. The first time I played it, I aimed for the little inlet you’re talking about on 18 and had a play to the green in 2. Absolutely clocked a 3-wood (as good as I’ve ever hit a 3-wood in my life) and actually went over the green. Had a tricky downhill chip, and failed to get up and down for birdie, but I did make par. The next day when we played it again, I hit another terrific tee shot to practically the same spot, but cold-topped my 3-wood and had a wedge in. Par both days. Interesting little golf course, and the price is right, too. Carved out of a privately-owned apple orchard; hence the name Apple Tree. This is an especially well-kept golf course in the middle of nowhere (I would call Yakima, WA "nowhere"), and I think we played for like $18 a person INCLUDING CART. Amazing. Randy
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Easily the "weirdest" design feature I’ve seen are these, although I wouldn’t characterize either one as "bad." Hole #17 – Appletree GC, Yakima, WA Par three hole with an island green, in the shape of a big green apple, the shape of which is quite visible from the highly elevated tee. bunker behind the green in the shape of a leaf, and the bridge leading to the green from behind appears as the "stem." While yes, #17 at Apple Tree is strange, it’s more of a strange novelty than a strange quirk of design. A little Muirhead tribute. http://community.webshots.com/photo/86835943/86838652NQjomH The one that’s really quirky at Apple Tree is the 18th. A Tetris puzzle of a hole if I’ve ever seen one. Par 5 about 500 or so, but you can really cut some distance off this sucker if you’re able to launch one high enough to clear the water on the left, but soft enough to stay on the small island of fairway between the water and bunker. The picture link below was taken from the 17th tee, but show the layout of the tee shot pretty well. The teeing ground for the 18th is located on the right edge of the picture and the 1st and 2nd shots hug the right side of the lake. http://community.webshots.com/photo/86835943/86838632VqMOki The second shot is super uphill to a really tricky green. A large Apple shaped waste bunker with red-ish sand awaits any wayward shots and leaves a tough 50 yard semi-blind explosion shot. http://community.webshots.com/photo/86835943/86838829iThzHP The 16th is one the best/underated holes in the Northwest, IMHO. Really tight if you take the driver from the tee. http://community.webshots.com/photo/86835943/86838524JcJdTK I don’t know who took these pictures, but they are great! :-) — Washington State University "That shot is impossible!…Jack Nicholson himself couldn’t make it!"– Homer Simpson
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Easily the "weirdest" design feature I’ve seen are these, although I wouldn’t characterize either one as "bad." Hole #17 – Appletree GC, Yakima, WA Par three hole with an island green, in the shape of a big green apple, the shape of which is quite visible from the highly elevated tee. bunker behind the green in the shape of a leaf, and the bridge leading to the green from behind appears as the "stem."
While yes, #17 at Apple Tree is strange, it’s more of a strange novelty than a strange quirk of design. A little Muirhead tribute. http://community.webshots.com/photo/86835943/86838652NQjomH The one that’s really quirky at Apple Tree is the 18th. A Tetris puzzle of a hole if I’ve ever seen one. Par 5 about 500 or so, but you can really cut some distance off this sucker if you’re able to launch one high enough to clear the water on the left, but soft enough to stay on the small island of fairway between the water and bunker. The picture link below was taken from the 17th tee, but show the layout of the tee shot pretty well. The teeing ground for the 18th is located on the right edge of the picture and the 1st and 2nd shots hug the right side of the lake. http://community.webshots.com/photo/86835943/86838632VqMOki The second shot is super uphill to a really tricky green. A large Apple shaped waste bunker with red-ish sand awaits any wayward shots and leaves a tough 50 yard semi-blind explosion shot. http://community.webshots.com/photo/86835943/86838829iThzHP The 16th is one the best/underated holes in the Northwest, IMHO. Really tight if you take the driver from the tee. http://community.webshots.com/photo/86835943/86838524JcJdTK I don’t know who took these pictures, but they are great! :-) — Washington State University "That shot is impossible!…Jack Nicholson himself couldn’t make it!"– Homer Simpson
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I think there are a variety of unusual holes… One category is a hole that ABSOLUTELY forces you to hit a short club off the tee then all you want for your second shot. There’s one of those at the course just off the runway of the Columbus OH Airport. They do it with a small tre lined chute. Tee shot is maybe a 4, 5, 6 iron and follow that with a 3w. I like "backwards" holes. #10 at the Gattlinburg Country Club (or what ever it’s called these resembles one. Huge hills on both sides of the fairway and an elevated tee box make it a nice looking hole. Looks so easy from the tee. While I’ve never actually played it, General Butler State Park has/had a course built into a ski slope size hill (in fact they had a ski resort there for a few years) and they didn’t move very much earth to level the fairways. Many of the holes played around the hill… not up and down it. I’m told a perfect shot on the upper side of the fairway always rolled to the low side. I guess every shot was up and across the the fairway. Any hole designed to be played as a par 3, 4 or 5 would be pretty unusual. Although I beleive someone recently built a whole course of these multi-par holes.
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What’s the weirdest hole you have seen? By weird I’m not talking about challenging, but about holes with unusual design features. <snip I played a par 4 once that had a line of tall trees completely blocking view of the green (right in front of the green).
That sounds like the second hole at Hank Haney’s Golf Ranch, a straight par 4 of about 300 yds with a line of tall trees right before the green that you have to hit over. You can actually get into trouble hitting driver on the hole and getting too close to the trees. You have to lay back a little from them. Another hole that comes to mind is #9 at Pacific Dunes (Bandon Dunes). First of all, you tee off to a fairway that you can barely see up on top of a hill above you. In between you and the fairway is about 150 yds of sand dunes. When you get to the top of the hill, you find out there are actually two separate fairways, and two separate greens. Hopefully you hit your ball on the fairway going toward the green in play that day.
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That sounds like the second hole at Hank Haney’s Golf Ranch, a straight par 4 of about 300 yds with a line of tall trees right before the green that you have to hit over. You can actually get into trouble hitting driver on the hole and getting too close to the trees. You have to lay back a little from them.
Is that part of Stonebridge CC or does he have his own course?
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Easily the "weirdest" design feature I’ve seen are these, although I wouldn’t characterize either one as "bad." Hole #1 – Cottonwood Valley CC, Irving, TX (one of the two courses used by the Byron Nelson Classic) Green is in the shape of the state of Texas. Bunker behind the green is in the shape of Oklahoma. And yes, if you come up short on your approach, your ball finds the Gulf of Mexico. Hole #17 – Appletree GC, Yakima, WA Par three hole with an island green, in the shape of a big green apple, the shape of which is quite visible from the highly elevated tee. bunker behind the green in the shape of a leaf, and the bridge leading to the green from behind appears as the "stem." Next weirdest: I forget the hole number, Covington Plantation GC, Covington, GA Par three. Green is essentially round with "sunburst" design bunkers all around it. Another par three green at Covington Plantation originally had a bunker with a bird-shaped "grass island" within the bunker. It’s been removed. In fact, the whole damn golf course closed about 18 months ago. Not sure if it ever re-opened. Worst design: Hole #4, Bobby Jones GC, Atlanta, GA Entire fairway slopes severely from right to left. Any shot hit in the fairway rolls out of bounds, where the OB boundry is only a few steps left of the cartpath bordering the left side of the fairway. The correct tee shot here is to either hit a big slice, or to hit the ball toward the trees on the right side, or to just play the ball to the 5th fairway. Hole #17, Bobby Jones, GC, Atlanta, GA The original layout of this hole was a dogleg right, with the second shot over water. That green is still there, but it’s no longer in play. After that hole, there used to be a par three 17th hole that played over water from the right. But that tee is now closed, and what used to be the 16th fairway now plays to what used to be that par three green, making for a very awkward shot to a green that wasn’t built to receive shots from the angle it now plays. You kind of have to see it. But don’t waste your money. (It’s worth noting that as bad as these two holes are, the original design of the 3rd hole was worse. The original layout had the green on the flatlands below, with the green sitting atop an elevation about 100 feet above the tee. They finally changed it years ago, but not until John Gariety included this course in his book titled, "America’s Worst Golf Courses." There are plenty of other design features that enable the course to live up (or down) to its reputation, not the least of which is the stinky sewer that runs through it. Randy Randy
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – What’s the weirdest hole you have seen? By weird I’m not talking about challenging, but about holes with unusual design features. Most of the ones that come to my mind are either in the yardage dead zones (e.g. too long to be a par 3 and too short to be a par 4) and rely on some kind of artificial restraint, or arise from unusual geography (e.g. double dog-leg par 4’s which result from odd property boundaries.) These kinds of holes seem to be especially common on older courses in the midwest, where golf courses were often squeezed into unplanatable property on a farm and fit around buildings, creeks, and other hazards in too little space. Some of the ones that come to my mind are: a 470 yard par 5 with a 90 degree left turn 150 yards off the tee, and a big fence down the left side of the tee and beyond it to keep you from taking the shortcut (the green is only about 340 as the crow flies). Hit a monster hook though and you can get there in 2. A double dog leg par 4 which zigzags between a barn and a fenced field. You play it either by hitting a slice around zig (protected by a tree) to set you up to hit straight at the green, or hitting straight off the tee and hitting your second over the barn to cut the corner of the Zag. A 310 yard par 4 where you can carry about 290 yards of pond to go at it or hit to the side a shot of between 170 and 210 to a layup area hidden in a marsh (all you can see from the tee is the top of an aiming flag). Now a pro would consider this an intersting risk-reward short par 4, but for us mere mortals driving the thing is out of the question and hitting a blind layup is just weird. The hole invariably backs up because people can’t find their tee shots. A 180 yard par 3 that plays straight up hill to a green you can’t see — all you see is the top of a 20 foot tall flagstick which players are told to wave as they leave the unseen green. This hole is gone now, but it was infamous at the Hanover (NH) country club. It’s reason for being weird was the course was built around a ski jumping area and this hole ran from the landing area in a ravine up the side of the jumping area. The real pain was the hill is steep enough it’s hard to hit anything long enough to reach that clears it, and of course if you don’t clear the ball comes back at you. — http://home.att.net/~wamontgomery )
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There are a couple of holes around here that are short par 3’s with precipitous drops from tee to green. One of them has a road behind it and houses behind that.
Theres an oddball 9 holer here with a par 3 with a big drop that can’t be more than about 80 yards You walk up to the front of the tee box and it looks like you are hitting right down on it. The green is in the middle of a big loop on a creek that goes almost all the way around it. The problem of course is figuring out how to hit anything short enough to land on the thing. (This is one of those 9 holes hacked out of land the farmer had that wasn’t suitable for farming and most of them are funky. Last time I played there I think the greens fees were about 5 bucks, and there was a box to put them in near the first tee if you wanted to play at a time there was nobody in the clubhouse.) Got to be torture living there. You hear the ball hit the road, then you wait to hear what part of your house it hits.
Not to mention driving around there. One of the things I’ve always wondered is why there aren’t more serious accidents involving golf balls and cars. One of the courses I play has 2 holes that border a very busy highway with 4 lanes of 55Mph traffic on it. The road is probably no more than 20 yards left of the fairway on the other side of a fence and some bushes, and hooks over the bushes are frequent. You can’t even see the cars through the bushes to wave a warning, not that anyone could do anything since the traffic is ususally high speed bumper-to-bumper. I’m amazed there’s never, to my knowledge at least, been a chain reaction wreck triggered by an errant tee shot hitting someone’s windshield. — http://home.att.net/~wamontgomery ) – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – What’s the weirdest hole you have seen? Every hole on any course designed by Pete Dye. –Blair "Tile roofs, too."
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What’s the weirdest hole you have seen? By weird I’m not talking about challenging, but about holes with unusual design features. <snip
I played a par 4 once that had a line of tall trees completely blocking view of the green (right in front of the green). — Jim Sabatke Hire Me!! – See my resume at http://my.execpc.com/~jsabatke Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
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The most fun hole I’ve seen in Atlanta is at Bobby Jones where there is a par 4 about 350 yards where the tee is elevated about 150 feet or more above the fairway which doglegs sharply to the left from the landing area. Trouble is not only can you not see the green for the tall pines and oaks blocking your view, but in the summer when the branches fill in, you have about a 15 yard gap immediately in front of the tee to shoot thru to the fairway. The regulars there know just what tree to aim at on the left to cut the corner to the green.
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Metamora Country Club in Metamora MI. Can’t recall the hole #, but it’s a par 5 with OB on left and right. If you hit driver, you have to hit a WEDGE to layup for your 2nd shot, then you still have about 150-170 over the water. You cannot see the water from the tee box.
The 11th at Crowbush in PEI, Canada is like that. The last time I played there, I hit driver, PW, driver and two putts for par. Bruce Bruce E. Newman * Fredericton, NB, Canada http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=newmanb info at benewman dot bizland dot com * http://go.to/bruce_newman
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What’s the weirdest hole you have seen?
Every hole on any course designed by Pete Dye. There are a couple of holes around here that are short par 3’s with precipitous drops from tee to green. One of them has a road behind it and houses behind that. Got to be torture living there. You hear the ball hit the road, then you wait to hear what part of your house it hits. –Blair "Tile roofs, too."
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What’s the weirdest hole you have seen? By weird I’m not talking about challenging, but about holes with unusual design features. Most of the ones that come to my mind are either in the yardage dead zones (e.g. too long to be a par 3 and too short to be a par 4) and rely on some kind of artificial restraint, or arise from unusual geography (e.g. double dog-leg par 4’s which result from odd property boundaries.) These kinds of holes seem to be especially common on older courses in the midwest, where golf courses were often squeezed into unplanatable property on a farm and fit around buildings, creeks, and other hazards in too little space. Some of the ones that come to my mind are:
Played a course once where your tee shot went over the driveway into the parking lot. Maybe 20 or 30 yards between the tee and the driveway, slightly uphill. I of course did not get the ball off of the ground, it hits the curb and me and my playing partner lose sight of it. A couple of seconds later we hear it land 10 yards behind us. My playing partner goes to tee off to which I reply, its not your shot, I am away. Steve
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i played a hole where ur drive had to be about 100 yards and then there was a 180* turn and you were hitting for the green. between the tee and green there was lots of trees, no hope to get over
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http://www.meadowsfarms.com/golf/watrfall.htm Check out number 8. It’s made to look like you are hitting to a baseall diamond. It’s plenty weird. Kenny
Interesting course! Especially that 841 yard par 6 on Longest Hole Nine. Looks like a fun place. Dan
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– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – http://www.meadowsfarms.com/golf/watrfall.htm Check out number 8. It’s made to look like you are hitting to a baseall diamond. It’s plenty weird. Kenny Interesting course! Especially that 841 yard par 6 on Longest Hole Nine. Looks like a fun place. Dan
The Waterfall hole is fun too. It’s a par 3 where you hit up over a waterfall to the green. After you tee off, you drive the cart behind the waterfall where there used to be a snack bar so you could get a hot dog and beer on the way to the green. I read that they finally closed it down because the staff complained it was too spooky to work there – it was like working in a cave. Kenny — Kenny Stultz – Troll and SPAM intolerant RSG Rollcall: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=stultzk "Golf is the only sport where a precise knowledge of the Rules can earn one a reputation for bad sportsmanship"
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What’s the weirdest hole you have seen? By weird I’m not talking about challenging, but about holes with unusual design features.
There is a short 9 hole course, par 32, on the OR. coast where on the last hole, its a 210 yard par 4 from the whites and 225 par3 from the blues. Steve
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jackson hole, wyoming.<s mnhj the course you describe – sounds quaint, and proves that where there is a will, there is a way. seriously, a par 3 14th at coeur d’alene (Idaho) resort. It floats in lake coeur d’ alene. the yardage changes daily, as the green moves in, and out. I think I saw some time back, where Carl Paul the founder of Golfsmith Int’l – aced it. What’s the weirdest hole you have seen?
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